SPOILS OF EMPIRE IN ASIA

...On Aug...

...In the vast territories of occupied China, the Japanese forces were called upon to retain the cities and towns under their control, to hold them against Communist or other guerrilla forces, and to surrender them only to the "regular" forces subject to the orders of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek...

...Japan has become, in effect, an American colony, under American military rule...

...The Communists and fellow-travelers, in denouncing Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek as a "Fascist," were giving Stalin effective aid in his negotiationa with Chiang Kai-shek—and with the United States...

...Behind this campaign against MacArthur, just as with the campaign against Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese National Government, lay the aims and ambitions of Moscow...

...Their activities, and the propaganda campaigns of American Communists and fellow-travelers, were of great assistance to Moscow in strengthening its position in China and in relation to the Chinese Government...

...Some there are who see in such-considerations merely new rationalizations and justifications of Empire...

...It is the starting-point for new conflicts for imperial domination...

...And the Communists have been in some ways better rulers than the Kuomintang...

...The conflict is .already beginning...

...In combination, these two powers might dominate Asia even more completely than Russia and Japan were doing in 1942—before American power began to make its weight really felt—and more completely than Stalin and Hitler were dominating Europe in 1940— before the vast might of the United States was thrown into the balance...

...While the Japanese forces held the cities and towns against hostile Chinese forces, American war planes flew in American forces and American-trained Chinese, to whom the Japanese formally relinquished their military control...

...Year after year they carried out their bitter and bloody struggle in China, which they envisaged as part of the "World Revolution centered in Moscow...

...He need not have been...

...China has become, in effect, a Russo-American dependency, tied to the Soviet Union by formal alliance but also dependent upon American financial and military support...

...In this treaty, the Soviet Union formally declared its readiness "to render China moral support and assistance with military equipment and other material resources, this support and assistance given fully to the National Government as the Central Government of China...

...Already it is clear that the division of imperial spoils in Asia is not a basis for peace, but a way to new conflict...

...The Japanese, having surrendered to the Allied Powers, became our allies against the Annamese, who were forcibly crushed...

...If Chiang is a Fascist, the alliance with Stalin is a new Communist-Fascist pact, essentially similar to the Stalin-Hitler entente...

...It now demands a share in "control" over Japan...

...The question is newly complicated by the fact that China has become an ally of the Soviet Union, which has shown its determination to cut across Britain's "life-lines" and if possible to oust Britain from every practicable area and influence in Asia—as in Europe and the Mediterranean...

...The Chinese Communists were completely loyal to Moscow—the "Soviet fatherland," as they termed it...

...There was, however, no reason for such bafflement, just as there was nothing "incredible" about the Stalin-Hitler pact in 1939 or the Stalin-Tokyo pact in 1941...

...In Saigon, where the Japanese had given administrative powers to Annamese nationalists, the attempt of the returning Allies (the British) to restore the French administration resulted in forcible resistance by the Annamese...

...Moscow has been training its Japanese military fifth column, known as the "Japanese People's Emancipation League," in China for the past two years, preparing for a possible foothold in Japan when that country was beaten down by American strength and Chinese tenacity, by American, Chinese, and British blood, sweat, and tears...

...These have been made somewhat clearer, and more directly, by Molotov's demarche at London...

...Many persons, misled by the Communist and fellow-traveler propaganda campaign against Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, were quite baffled by the news of the Stalin-Chiang alliance...

...But Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had still another ally—the Soviet Government...

...Before August was out, the same papers which had been campaigning against Generalissimo Chiang were campaigning against Gen...

...It brings the vast armed and regimented might of the Soviet Union and its armed forces, stretching from the Adriatic and the Oder clear across eastern Europe and central and northern Asia through Mongolia and Manchuria to the Sea of Japan and the northern Pacific, with some 350,000,000 inhabitants, together with the immense territories of China, larger than the United States and with some 450,000,000 people south of the Great Wall...

...The Soviet Navy now dominates the Sea of Japan, and controls the fisheries which are indispensable to Japan's livelihood...

...The British watch ever more apprehensively the growth of their old imperial rival, Muscovy, in Asia...

...It is the Soviet Union, whose territorial and economic gains were the greatest, which is now demanding further spoils...

...Briefly, the Soviet Union has emerged as the greatest power on the continent of Asia, with island bastions out into the northern Pacific and with an alliance with China which brings its powerful influence clear down into Indo-China...

...dishonest to assert that the Chinese Communist regime was "democratic," while the Kuomintang regime was a "dictatorship...

...But now there are new considerations, which affect even "left-wing" Labor men...

...We are seeing the fruits of war-promotion and war over Asia...

...It has built up armed Japanese forces in China itself, and is probably developing "Free Japan" (!) forces from the great surrendered armies in Manchuria...

...Even the native nationalist movements of Asiatic peoples have been brought into this picture...

...When Commissar Molotov made his amazing demand, at the Council of Foreign Ministers in London on September 25, Secretary Byrnes was shocked and indignant...

...He has secured a formal alliance with the Chinese Government of Chiang Kai-shek which binds that Government firmly to Moscow in its foreign policy...

...The alternatives to war, dictatorship, and imperial partition are the firm organization of democracy, peace, and security...

...WHAT is Moscow's complaint...

...THE pact between Stalin and Chiang, in August 1945, may be as significant in the course of history as the pact between Stalin and Hitler, in August 1939, or that between Stalin and Tokyo, in April 1941...

...They were re-established thanks to the military, naval, and economic aid of the United States...

...But it was completely...

...14, the day of Japan's surrender, the Soviet Government at Moscow signed a formal treaty of alliance with the Chinese National Government of Chiang Kai-shek...

...FOR more than a year, Stalin's American agents and fellow-travelers carried on their campaign against Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, violently denouncing him as a "Fascist...

...They will continue in power so long as we continue to maintain and support them against their Asiatic subjects...

...British and Japanese forces cooperated against the native nationalists whom the Japanese had for four years patronized and encouraged...

...But they are more than that...

...were he to do so, their campaign against him would die down as rapidly as the one against Chiang Kai-shek...

...In the actual event, however, he did not need it...

...In these clear and specific terms, Moscow agreed to give Chiang military support against his internal foes and rivals—the Chinese Communists...

...This means, in simpler terms, the "right" to influence events as in Germany, to insinuate its Communists into the political life of Japan as it has done in every European country where it has been given the opportunity...

...We are now seeing some of the results of this in Indo-China...

...Twenty years ago British labor men and Liberals challenged the "necessity" of a great naval base at Singapore—and in fact held up work on it for many years...

...As honest writers have repeatedly pointed out, there is unspeakable misery under the Kuomintang dictatorship—wretchedness and famine in comparison with which the regime of the Chinese Communists seems desirable by comparison...

...MacArthur...

...All Asia has now been partitioned, and where one imperial Power gives way another imperial power or its satellites or agents entrench themselves...

...And when Moscow got the terms it wanted from Chiang Kai-shek, it made a deal with him and double-crossed its Chinese Communist dupes and victims...

...This division of power between the United States and the Soviet Union was the major outcome of the Far Eastern war...

...If we aim now at peace and freedom, we must adhere to this aim, and permit no interference...

...For any of them to succeed in a period of war and conflict, they had to have the support of one military power or another...

...It has not disarmed the Bulgarians, the Rumanians, or the Hungarians...

...The peace can be made real and enduring—if we wish to make it so...

...Their honesty in this may be gauged from the fact that with the alliance concluded between Stalin and Chiang, the "anti-Fascist" campaign against Chiang died down, and American fellow-travelers started talking about something else...

...There has been no liberation for Asiatic peoples...

...It was Manchuria that the Japanese Kwan-tung Army used as a base, since 1931, to influence and even dominate Japanese political life...

...THE alternative, however, is not merely Empire versus Asiatic nationalism...

...Its tremendous gains have but whetted its appetite for further expansion...

...Moscow's expanding power threatens Britain and its associates not only on the Asiatic continent but in Europe itself...

...Both were one-party dictatorships...

...They have occupied the southern part of the island of Sakhalin, and the long chain of Kurile Islands, with populations almost wholly Japanese...

...He has gained direct control of the great naval base at Port Arthur, of the vital port of Darien...

...The Emperor's main shortcoming, in their eyes, appears to have been his failure to conclude a personal pact with Stalin...

...It now has only one real rival in the Far East—the United States, which has become the dominant power in the western Pacific and possesses also a foothold on the Asiatic continent...

...They are a part of the present situation in Asia...

...But the British and Dutch empires are in effect dependencies...

...Moscow is not satisfied with direct ascendancy in China north of the Great Wall, and in other vast areas of eastern Asia...

...Spoils Of Empire In Asia By HARRY PAXTON HOWARD THE Soviet Government, emerging after a week of war as the great outstanding winner of the long and bloody struggle against Japan, has now challenged the American occupation policy in that country and demanded the establishment of an "Allied control commission" with Soviet participation...

...MacArthur and our occupation policies which definitely presaged an official move by Moscow against us...

...They were also howling for the blood of Emperor Hirohito...

...Moscow does not aim to disarm the Japanese...

...They performed these tasks as ordered...

...His forces have occupied (by secret prior agreement with the American Government) the most industrially developed and productive areas of Korea...

...Moscow's fifth column in the United States, with its fellow-travelers, had for weeks been carrying on a "smear campaign" against Gen...

...His Mongol puppets have become unchallenged masters of the immense territories of Outer Mongolia, and are now expanding into Inner Mongolia as well...

...WE ARE seeing the spoils of empire in Asia...

...Certainly, the one-party dictatorship of the Kuomin-tang, under General Chiang's personal rule, is anything but democratic...

...Would the British Labor Government be justified, some Labor men ask in anxious sincerity, in surrendering Hong Kong to Stalin's ally...

...Hong Kong, most easterly outpost of the Empire, was increasingly recognized as a strategic liability, rather than an asset...

...Through our defeat of Japan, Stalin has gained ascendancy in the vast territories of Manchuria, larger than Germany and France taken together, with more productive wealth and industrial development and railway mileage than all the rest of China taken together...

...But already it is clear that this division is not a stable one...

...The campaign against Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek is already fading into history...

...The great British Empire is re-expanding and re-establishing itself in Burma, 'Malaya, Singapore, New Guinea, Hong Kong, and lesser areas—and is "temporarily" taking over the southern part of "French" Indo-China...

...Now that Moscow is in control there, it aims to work in the same way—with the vast might of the Soviet Union in the background, and with American Communists and fellow-travelers as propaganda agents against the building up of a peaceful and democratic Japan under American leadership...

...The war has left not a single Asiatic country really free and independent...

...The Communist and fellow-traveler propaganda prepared the ground and smoothed the way for Moscow's direct offensive...

...The rule of Queen Wilhelmina, re-established in Holland thanks to Allied arms, is also being re-established over the 75,000,000 inhabitants of the "Dutch" East Indies...

...It was not only in Indo-China that the Japanese overnight changed from "bestial enemies" to imperial allies...

...These pacts were expressions of the ruthless "realism" of Stalin's power-seeking foreign policies, and were to be expected just as soon as they became advantageous...

...It has maintained and used these forces itself, and is seeking to arm and strengthen them further...

...Should Hong Kong be given to the Chinese National Government...

...There are those who put it in political terms: Should a Labor Government turn over Hong Kong to a Chinese Kuomintang dictatorship—which some well-informed Labor men flatly term a Fascist regime...